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Straight Lines


Something that’s always bothered me when I talk about art with people is when people say, “oh gosh, I can’t even draw a straight line” as an example of their perceived dearth in artistic ability. This statement is just wrong on many levels. This article should be approached like a literary rage room where the complete destruction of common idioms and sayings are celebrated.


I’m always trying to stay consistent with my self-expression. Over time, I’ve had periods of abstinence that I’m dismayed to admit have had an effect on my exposure to practice. Since coming to this realization, I try to make something at least every week. Even if it's just for me, if I’m not going to share it, all the better! Giving yourself the freedom to make something that no one else ever has to see is intoxicatingly liberating. It's almost too much freedom.


In self-expression, one of the obstacles I had to overcome is negative self-talk, especially when it related to my ability to render the idea in my head into reality on a page or as a finite, observable material object. The idea in my head is beautiful, amazing, so earth-shatteringly good, inimitable even- and the lines my hands are making with the pen look like a kindergartener’s frustration rendered two-dimensionally. But, at the intersection of this predicament lies the Universal Truth that ideas are not unique. Sorry, but someone else had that idea too. Probably lots of people, over millennia. So, then, we find the awesomeness of the idea is your execution of it. How you communicate that idea is what makes it special, not the idea itself.


The way you execute the idea is the special sauce that makes it unique, not the idea itself.


There are so many things to draw that aren’t straight. No part of people are straight (lol). Straight lines do not appear in nature, leading us to the idea that straight lines are a man-made construct as a means to the Matrix’s end. Like the movie, but also like the society we live in and its structured hierarchy of class, labor, etc. 


Straightness is a fallacy. Straightness is a human construct, designed for control. To control the organization of things such as in a spice rack, to organize humans into cubicles, to organize celebrities in Hollywood Squares. Lines are usually intended to connect two things together or to define the edge of one thing. 


Perhaps the term “straight” for heterogeneous couples or individuals should be politically incorrect. I certainly do not wish to be perceived as controlling anything outside myself, because I’m not a witch- and even if I was, which I’m not- people still get freaked out about witches. 


If you made it to the end and you still want to draw straight lines, grab a ruler.

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